Paul McCartney's Long-Lost Christmas Album Surfaces Online

If you’re one-quarter of the biggest musical act in the world, what do you get your bandmates for the holidays? For Paul McCartney, the answer was to compile and narrate a mix tape of songs just for his fellow members of The Beatles. Completed in 1965, he only made three copies of his original tape—one for each of his bandmates. But the low-quality discs he used for the copies wore out quickly, and the album was thought to be lost to history. Not anymore, as The Huffington Post reports.

A dub of the record, Unforgettable, recently surfaced on YouTube. In a kind of personalized DJ session, the 18-minute recording features McCartney sharing experimental tracks as well as songs from Nat King Cole, Elvis Presley, and others.

According to McCartney, the reason for the album’s disappearance was that the acetate discs he used to make the copies of the original tape were of poor quality and rotted easily. And it seems the band wasn't terribly invested in preserving the album, either. According to one Beatles catalog site, John Lennon re-recorded over one part of McCartney's original tape.

At some point, though, someone in the band’s inner circle made a tape dub of the album, which passed through the hands of private collectors. The YouTube video apparently isn’t a complete sample, but at least something survived. You can listen to it below.

[h/t The Huffington Post]